This study examines teachers' perceptions about a structured literacy curriculum that uses explicit instruction and teacher script combined with instructional practices common in special education such as time delay, error correction, and prompting strategies. The main research question addressed by this study was "What are the perceptions and…

Two studies examined the efficacy of using computer-assisted instruction (CAI) to supplement a phonics-based reading curriculum for preschoolers and kindergartners in an urban public school system. The CAI programs provided exercises in phonological awareness and basic phonics skills. We compared treatment classes using CAI with control classes…

The purpose of this study was to compare teacher and student perceptions of motivation for reading. Motivational constructs were theoretically derived from previous work on efficacy and task orientation. First-grade students and teachers were asked to complete parallel reading motivation questionnaires. Results suggest both first-grade teachers…

Using a reliable and broad-based measure of morphological awareness, which tapped knowledge of relational, syntactic, and distributional morphology, we examined the development of morphological knowledge among older elementary students and the relationship of their morphological knowledge to a range of literacy measures. We found that…

The objectives of the present study were twofold: (a) to explore the interrelationship among distal, proximal cognitive skills, and word reading; and (b) to identify those cognitive processes that predict phonological awareness and rapid naming. Seventy First-Nation Canadian children attending grades 3 and 4 were examined on phonological…

The first goal of this study was to examine young children's developing narrative comprehension abilities using theory-based, authentic measures of comprehension processes. The second goal was to examine the relations among young children's comprehension abilities and other early reading skills. Children ages 4 and 6 listened to or watched two…

Uses mixed-case words as a prime in the priming task in order to investigate the locus of an orthographic spelling check, based on the assumption of the phonological recoding hypothesis. Indicates that the orthographic spelling check distinguished the normal-case and the mixed-case in a later stage of word recognition, not in an early stage. (SG)

Compares childrens' ability to read words printed in their own invented spelling with their ability to read the words correctly spelled. Finds that children responded similarly to invented and correct spellings and that there was a small tendency to gradually respond more accurately to standard spellings from first to third grade. (RS)

Suggests that word length has a strong effect on visual word recognition. Examines the locus of the word-length effect by looking at the interacting pattern between word length and word frequency. Finds that some parts of the word-length effect and the word-frequency effect have the same locus. (SC)

Describes an inductive categorization strategy for helping children develop word recognition ability. Closes with theoretical and interpretive comments that support the use of the word sort teaching strategy. (FL)

Examines how concepts-about-print knowledge interacted with other traditional measures of print knowledge, to affect children's reading environmental print in context and out. Demonstrates that concepts-about-print and word recognition were the most reliable discriminators between children who could accurately and consistently read environmental…

Explores the validity of the debate on the locus of the word-length effect. Controls two confounding variables: neighborhood size and different perceptual availability between inside and outside letters in a long word. Finds when the two variables were controlled, the word-length effect vanished. (NH)

Investigates how early lexical processing (word recognition) could influence reading. Finds that less-proficient readers could not finish the task of word recognition within time limits and their accuracy rates were quite low, whereas the proficient readers processed the physical words immediately and translated them into meanings quickly in order…

We examined how children with and without oral language (word-finding) difficulties (WFD) perform on oral reading (OR) versus silent reading recognition (SRR) tasks when reading the same words and how lexical factors influenced OR accuracy, error patterns, and nature of miscues. Primary-grade students were administered an experimental reading…

Reports on a study that investigated the ability of second grade students to listen to, infer, and produce the correct pronuciations of high-frequency words in a story-like context. (FL)